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Talk-28: The PAVRANGE Acoustic Ranging System
Capt. Michael Sacarny,
MIT Dept of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Sea Grant
Although the MIT Sailing Pavilion has been the site of marine autonomy and acoustics research for decades, it lacked a permanent system for tracking underwater vehicles and dedicated infrastructure to support acoustic modem testing. In 2024, the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department funded the development of such a system. This talk discusses the goals, design, and construction of what became known as the PAVRANGE Acoustic Ranging System.
PAVRANGE consists of 16 hydrophones spread across the MIT Sailing Pavilion dock, hardwired back to a dedicated data acquisition system capable of simultaneous sampling across all hydrophones at 500 KHz. Additionally, power and ethernet access for multiple acoustic modems is provided at each end of the dock. We discuss the challenge of installing such a system in a complex, active, all-weather dock environment.
The intention of PAVRANGE was to be a foundation for diverse aspects of marine autonomy: AUV navigation, swarm autonomy, combined surface/underwater operations, and an aid to students visualizing AUV behavior, among others. We demonstrate the utility of PAVRANGE by presenting multiple current projects.
Categories:
- UAV
- sUAS